Bread and Freedom: or changing diet/dictator

Inquiring minds are asking "So, what's going on in the Middle East?"
While it's true that some economists have been warning for quite some time about the effects of food/commodities prices, history should have taught that food and liberties are always claimed when a revolution starts. During the French Revolution people cried "pain et liberté", that means bread and freedom. It is apparent that a combination of high food prices and unemployment under a dictatorial regime create the condition of social unrest and revolutions. The domino effect is ongoing.

Lessons from the financial crisis and history should be that definitely we should not reply "If they have no bread, let them eat cake!"("S'ils n'ont plus de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche"). I am not sure that some governments, politicians, bankers or economists have fully understood that it's not the right answer to keep going in business as usual mode.

UPDATE: The BBC has an interesting map about the potential for social unrest following the fall of the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia.
While the map should be titled "Mediterranean and Middle East protests", I still contend that Berlusconi should be included in that survey with a pretty high unrest index based at least on age and corruption. Definitely the domino effect should sweep more leaders from power...

In Italian read here .

Furies by you: or Three women judges to hear Silvio Berlusconi hooker trial

Three female judges will hear the case, which was "fast-tracked" by judge Cristina Di Censa to take place in Milan on April 6.

Odes of Giosue Carducci/Miramar:  Darkly the Furies, by you, to the wind.  Shake out the sails.

In Greek mythology the Erinnýes (Ἐρινύες, pl. of Ἐρινύς, Erinýs; literally "the angry ones") or Eumenídes (Εὐμενίδες, pl. of Εὐμενίς; literally "the gracious ones" but also translated as "Kind-hearted Ones" or "Kindly Ones") or Furies or Dirae in Roman mythology were female chthonic deities of vengeance or supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath". Burkert suggests they are "an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath".

It's more than ironic for Berlusconi...

Bunga Bunga or The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits

What's happening to Italy? Berlusconi's escort scandal is self-explanatory of an history...of  "fucking " dictatorships.

However some Italians are pretty much convinced that the Fable of the Bees is just the political economy recipe the country needs.

Remember that the author of The Fable of the Bess,  poem published in 1705 by  Bernard Mandeville, argued that "a libertine, for example, is a vicious character, and yet his spending will employ tailors, servants, perfumers, cooks, and opportunist female and/or male prostitutes. These persons, in turn, will employ bakers, carpenters, and the like. Therefore, the rapaciousness and violence of the base passions of the libertine benefit society in general." I wonder if that is the case in Italy or somebody should study more economics (Mr. Mandeville was a political economist...).

Had Mandeville already a Berlusconi in mind?

Yet some four centuries before Mandeville, Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia, Purgatory, Canto VI, lines 76-78 read: 

Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello,                (Alas enslaved Italy,
                                                             abode of anguish, 
nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta,    ship with no pilot
                                                            in a great storm,
non donna di province, ma bordello!           not ruler of provinces,  
                                                                      but bordello!)

Please note that the Italian word “bordello” has actually two different meanings: literally “a cheap whorehouse”, it also means metaphorically any place or situation of troublesome mess.

Now as a brothel it does not appear that the Bunga Bunga system is that cheap in all respects or making any good to the economy in the Mandeville's spirit.

As far as the modern colloquial Italian second meaning is concerned, the mess is such that Italy appears a dictatorship whose rulers spend their days in brothels. Definitely a situation of troublesome mess.

The Roman Salute: the case of Italian dictatorship

I have received from a friend of mine the picture above.
For its interpretation I would suggest to read the book on the Roman salute or saluto Romano. "This book is the first systematic study of the saluto romano, the Roman or Fascist salute, in the various cultural contexts that were decisive for the origin of this gesture, its appropriation by totalitarian ideologies, and its dissemination. It also traces the survival of the raisedarm salute in the popular media until today, adducing and interpreting extensive textual and visual evidence since well before the birth of Fascism".
Italian history is complicate but at this stage one might reasonably say that it's a "fucking" history...of dictatorships...

PS: of course on Berlusconi's position there is a strong assumption that he can make it..

Bunga Bunga, the intruder!!

Any similarity?

Tunisian President fleed country amid unrest;
 
Egypt's Mubarak is being pushed to flee country unless he grants civil liberties;

Silvio Berlusconi is kindly requested to flee Italy as soon as possible and bring Bunga Bunga system along with him...

UPDATE:

Behind every man 

there's an exhausted woman!